With its bright whites and perfect black levels, the LG 55EC9300 lives up to the promise...

Editors' note, April 25, 2014:This review has been updated to reflect features added in the latest version of the app.

Yahoo overhauled its Flickr for Android and iOS apps with a refreshed design that looks a lot like Instagram. Like Facebook's photo-sharing service, the apps now put of a stream of photos from the people you follow front and center, where you can leave a comment or like the photo. With the new design, Flickr is emphasizing that it's more than just a place to store your photos and videos -- it's also a space to share and engage with other photographers.

Many of the same Flickr features you're used to are still available in both apps, including your photo stream, albums, and groups. You can also still view original-quality uncompressed photos, and store up to a terabyte of photos and video. Both versions even automatically back up everything you shoot with your phone. They're dead simple to use, the new interface looks great, and Flickr is a nifty tool for storing all your mobile photos in the cloud.

Setup and design

To get started, you must have an account set up with Yahoo, or you can create a new account right from the app, which lets you use your Facebook or Google+ credentials if you like. Once you're all set up, you'll get free access to Flickr, which comes with the ability to upload up to a terabyte of photos or video to your account. Before you start worrying about running out of space, Yahoo points out that you could take a photo once every hour for more than 60 years before using it all up.

Both the iOS and Android apps have a similar look, but some features live in the different places. In the iOS app, there's a prominent camera button at the bottom of the screen, which launches the camera. On the left and right are toggles for the main photo stream and your profile, respectively. With the Android app, there are icons at the top of the screen for search, your photo stream, your profile, and notifications. The camera button is in the far right corner.

In both apps, your profile page shows your profile photo at the top, which you can customize from the app, with your most recent uploads right below that. There's also a stock background photo behind your profile picture, but you can't swap that out. You can jump to your albums, the photos you've liked, and your groups from your profile page.

There's also a notification menu in both apps, which shows new followers, comments, and likes.

Photos front and center

Both the iOS and Androids apps open directly to a stream of photos that the people you follow have shared to Flickr. It's a vertical column of photos, just like you see on Instagram, and you swipe up and down to get around. Like Instagram, there's a space below each image to like, comment on, and share it. The difference with Flickr is that while the images are squared off in the stream to save space, you can also tap each photo to view it full-sized.

If someone you follows uploads multiple photos at once, you'll see a small collage in your stream with the number of photos the shared below it. You can tap that collage to see photo individually.

Flickr's new social stream shows photos from the people you follow on Flickr.
Screenshot by Sarah Mitroff/CNET

About The Author

Sarah Mitroff is a CNET associate editor who reviews Android software and mobile hardware. In the past, she's also written about consumer tech, startups, and business news for Wired, MacWorld, PCWorld, and VentureBeat.

About The Author

Jason Parker has been at CNET for nearly 15 years. He is the senior editor in charge of iOS software and has become an expert reviewer of the software that runs on each new Apple device. He now spends most of his time covering Apple iOS releases and third-party apps.